Learned League

I thought MEZZOGIORNO would play much easier than it did, just to name one recent example.

Heh, seems like a few people put SOLARI for that. Never knew what to call those things.

Have heard/seen that word, but it wasn't quite sufficiently active knowledge for me to dredge it up. Ended up putting MEZZOSOLE, without much hope.

On the luck of the draw and using demographic data for defence: Yesterday's first question was about an artist sharing her name with the Minneapolis art center where she was exhibited in 2007. A reasonably tough art question, and my opponent has modest Art stats... but lives in Minneapolis. No more than 1 point for you, buddy. (And yes, he got it right.)

lol, i was all "playa del sol?"

i happen to be on the Walker's mailing list so that was my gimme.

my fuckup was that i got gazprom but TYPED "gazpro" and hit send before i noticed, goddammit. still won, not too incensed

best week of my career

Oh yeah. Pretty impressive.

I know it's not much of a run to higher rundlers, but my opponents in my last 3 matches have all gotten 5 questions right, and I've been blowing off my defense, so I'm predictably in the relegation zone.

5-5-5 the last few days is a pretty tough oppo run for any rundle, I would think -- not much you can do about that, but on the potential upside, it could mean you're done with some of the hardest matches.

Lol I'm playing two of them again this season.

That said, my overall QP puts me squarely in the middle of the rundle (and I've had the hardest schedule so far), so I expect my record will even of at some point.

my opponents are allowed to get four right; any more than that and i feel robbed

my good week, as ever, was mostly due to luck. i've lived in mpls so i knew walker, plus browning/periwinkle/theatrical were pulled straight from my ass

Kind of all over the map for me. In terms of correct answers, I went 6-2-3-6-5.

FWIW, I'd never heard of Mezzogiorno.

i went beretta/indigo/tailor

enfield/lilac/teamster here lol

So about Q4.

Yesterday's, re Devanagari etc? Reasonably well done I thought; a nice way of getting around the difficulty of marking a question like "Devanagari is the fourth most used what?", where it may be hard to draw a clear line in a spectrum of plausible answers encompassing "writing systems", "scripts", "alphabets", "abjads", "abugidas", "written languages", etc etc.

Since I'm quite familiar with what Devanagari is myself, I was at first a bit confused by how easy the question looked to me ("Name one of the three most common writing systems in the world"), before I noticed that "writing system" was nowhere mentioned, and that the essence of the question was knowing what kind of thing Devanagari is. Still played harder than I guessed it would.

(if you mean today's, we should probably not discuss it until tomorrow obv)

No, that’s what I meant. I couldn’t figure out quite what he was getting at and ruled out characters for some reason so I put hiragana.

Some discussion on the message board. A few others are annoyed with the wording.

I really enjoy those ones where I have no idea and I just let my mind relax and something like "Joker's Wild" bubbles up and I'm just like, OK, brain, I don't really know what that is but but if that's the response to the stimulus I gave you let's go with it

i had no idea what devanagari was and guessed "bikram" lol

You are not the only one, apparently.

i went with English which is my own fault for not thinking. Then I watched an old episode of Only Connect last night WITH THE SAME QUESTION SET and the guy also answered English. At least I know where they got it from.

Really? Do tell.

Was there some kind of hidden theme then?

Broke my losing streak, still in relegation. Somehow I keep facing opponents with QPs of over 70% -- what are these people doing in C?!

Speaking of QPs, I can never seem to relocate the place where the stats abbreviations are defined.

Oh, section 8.5 of the rules, I think, shows most of them: https://www.learnedleague.com/thorsten/therules.php

I also tried to mouse over and hover but didn’t seem to work.

Oh wait on Player Tracker it does

Was there some kind of hidden theme then?

basically everyone who plays Learned League should be watching Only Connect and vice versa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wheelsongen/

oy... here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wheelsongen

oh ffs
search "wheelsongenius" on youtube

This?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9xj-uxVPXU

You set the question set/ Were there five similar questions?

At minute 16.

i had no idea what devanagari was and guessed "bikram" lol

― na (NA), Tuesday, March 2, 2021 10:29 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I almost guessed "yoga," which I remembered was part of a set (the six orthodox systems of Hindu philosophy, though I couldn't have told you that). Then I changed my mind and went with "ayurvedic." Good question, though.

yup, that's the one.

I really enjoy those ones where I have no idea and I just let my mind relax and something like "Joker's Wild" bubbles up and I'm just like, OK, brain, I don't really know what that is but but if that's the response to the stimulus I gave you let's go with it

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, March 2, 2021 10:04 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ha, that one was kind of the same for me. Although maybe in the back of my mind was a dim memory of when the same question was asked in 2014.

"Yoga" was my first thought, too. But then I reasoned "OK surely it's possible there is some set of traditional Indian physical/mental practices of which yoga is the most famous and devenagari is #3 or #4 but I can't think of any other besides yoga, and if divanagari were the #3 or #4 most popular type of yoga I would have heard of it, so it just can't be that." I think what really helped me is the word "system" -- not that many things are customarily described as systems. Yoga isn't, for instance.

when the same question was asked in 2014.

I didn't know they repeated questions!! I honestly feel kind of disillusioned.

I kind of love that best wrong answer though.

There aren't too many repeats. I'd say maybe a couple of times a season. And it's usually from at least a few years ago.

I do sometimes wonder to what extent Thorsten is aware of it, though. If I were him, I'd probably do a search of the archive just to see if and when a question was last asked, so I'm guessing that when it happens, it's because he figures it's been long enough that he can go back to the well.

my brain spat out this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYlcim0Dc60

and i WATCHED joker's wild as a kid so i KNEW that

thought the three mile island question was very awkwardly phrased too, although there remains only one reason to know the name of any island in the susquehanna

Upset! I won 6(3) to 5(4) against my 80% QP opponent. I have my pisspoor food and drink score to thank for giving me a 3 for Stroganoff, which was on my mind as I made a vegan version a couple weeks ago. Inexplicably got a point for Moors too, despite literature being my second best category.

Whoops, I got a 2 for Stroganoff, 3 for Uganda.

how in the fuc am i supposed to defend this

https://i.imgur.com/gCcK45C.jpg